Awards Committee Members

CLIFF BUDDLE

Cliff Buddle has been a journalist for 30 years. He began his career as a news agency reporter at the Central Criminal Court in London, where he worked for 12 years before being brought to Hong Kong by the South China Morning Post in 1994. Cliff was the Post’s chief court reporter for six years, during which he covered a wide variety of cases including the landmark constitutional legal battles following Hong Kong’s return to China. Since then, he has worked as an editor of the opinion pages, news editor, chief leader writer and deputy editor. Cliff spent 11 months as Acting Editor-in-Chief of the newspaper, overseeing its relaunch in 2011. He was appointed Editor, Special Projects, South China Morning Post this year. Cliff passed the Common Professional Examination (post-graduate diploma in law) in 2000. Then, in 2005, he graduated from the Master of Laws (Human Rights) programme at the University of Hong Kong. His dissertation was on the legal framework underpinning Hong Kong’s political system.

VIVIAN KWOK

Before rejoining Next Magazine in April 2011, Vivian spent a year with the South China Morning Post where she broke front-page investigative stories on university scandals, land deals, and a secret agreement between the Hong Kong government and developers. Her series about private clubs in Hong Kong won a Society of Publishers in Asia award for investigative reporting in 2011.

From 2006 to 2009, Vivian was the News Editor with Forbes.com in Hong Kong. She wrote on mergers and acquisitions, pollution and corruption, and financial markets across Asia.

Born in Hong Kong, Vivian began her career as a journalist in 1996 with Next Magazine. Leading stories in her nine years at Next spotlighted the properties boom, tech-stock bubbles, and the SARS epidemic, among others. Her cover stories on Next Magazine and South China Morning Post have prompted changes in government policies.

TOM LEANDER

Tom Leander is the editor-in-chief for Asia for Lloyd’s List, the maritime daily newspaper. Tom moved to Hong Kong to head up the Asia bureau in January 2010. Prior to that he was the chief editor of Lloyd’s List in London for two years. He also served as editor-in-chief for CFO Asia magazine from 2001 and CFO China magazine from 2003, both published by the Economist Group in Hong Kong. He started his career in journalism in New York City, working for Global Finance magazine and American Banker, a daily newspaper. Tom had a two-year stint in corporate life at Stern Stewart & Co in New York, an economics consulting firm, as a marketer.

PHILIP McCLELLAN

Philip McClellan is chief editor for Asia and deputy managing editor. Working out of the Hong Kong newsrom, he is responsible for the IHT’s editorial operations in Asia. Mr. McClellan joined the IHT in 2001 and spent three years in Paris as a financial editor before moving to Hong Kong to head the Business Asia partnership with Bloomberg News. He has also served as news editor and business editor for the IHT’s Asian operations.

Mr. McClellan began his career in journalism in Hong Kong in the 1990s, reporting for a local newsweekly before working as a correspondent for Agence France-Presse in Hong Kong and Bangkok. In 1997, Mr. McClellan moved to the San Francisco Bay Area at the height of the tech boom and spent two years working as a freelancer, covering technology and Asia-related topics, before joining the San Jose Mercury News. Mr. McClellan grew up in Asia and Europe. He has a BA in history from Lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon, and a MA in international affairs from the University of Hong Kong.

ROBYN MEREDITH

Robyn Meredith is a Hong Kong-based correspondent for Bloomberg Television, covering business and financial news across the Asia-Pacific region.

She’s the author of the New York Times bestseller, “The Elephant and the Dragon: The Rise of India and China” and “What it Means for All of Us,” published by W.W. Norton.

Prior to joining Bloomberg TV in January, 2011, she served as Senior Editor, Asia for Forbes, also based in Hong Kong. For Forbes, she has written cover stories on Sony, General Motors, Kodak, Microsoft, Philips, Toyota, Ratan Tata, Li & Fung,and Infosys. Ms. Meredith joined Forbes as its Detroit Bureau Chief in April, 2000 to write about the auto industry. She moved to Hong Kong in 2002. One of her articles was included in the 2002 Edition of the book “The Best Business Stories of the Year.”

Ms. Meredith is an award-winning journalist who previously wrote for The New York Times, USA Today and the American Banker newspaper, where her reporting exposed a pattern of insider deals at savings and loans that led to four Congressional hearings and an overhaul of U.S. banking regulations governing initial public offerings.

Ms. Meredith received a B.A. in English Literature from Boston University in 1990.

BRIAN RHOADS

Brian has served as the Thomson Reuters bureau chief for Greater China since June 2011, leading news coverage across the region that includes teams in Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong and Taipei. He served for three years as a managing editor first in the Americas from 2008 to 2010 and then in Asia before returning to his passion –the China story. Brian joined Reuters in 1996 as an editor in Hong Kong, and reported for Reuters from China for eight years through the Olympics in 2008. He covered the Chinese leadership transition from Jiang Zemin to Hu Jintao, China’s growing economic and political clout, and a half dozen rounds of talks on North Korea’s nuclear crisis. He covered Premier Wen Jiabao’s first visit to Washington in November 2003 and enjoyed two interviews with the premier, in 2004 and 2006. Brian was Shanghai bureau chief from 2000 to 2001, reporting on China’s developing financial markets.

Brian holds a BA in political science from Stanford University. He speaks both Chinese (Mandarin) and English. Brian is married and has one son.

Brian holds a BA in political science from Stanford University. He speaks both Chinese (Mandarin) and English. Brian is married and has one son.

DEMETRI SEVASTOPULO

Demetri Sevastopulo is Asia News Editor for the Financial Times. Based in Hong Kong, he is responsible for the Financial Times newsgathering operation throughout the Asia Pacific region, for the presentation of Asian news in all global editions of the newspaper and for Asian news coverage on FT.com.

Demetri was previously based in Washington as Pentagon & Intelligence correspondent for the Financial Times. He also covered business issues in Washington and worked briefly in the Tokyo bureau. Demetri began his career as a foreign exchange derivatives trader at Citibank in Japan. He later covered the Japanese economy for Bloomberg News.

An Irish national, Demetri graduated from Trinity College, Dublin, with an undergraduate degree in business studies. He has a master’s degree in East Asian studies from Harvard University where he was also a teaching fellow in Japanese and Chinese history. Demetri also studied at Beijing University and Sophia University. He speaks fluent Japanese, advanced Mandarin and basic Cantonese.

L.P.YAU

L.P. Yau (邱立本) ,born in Hong Kong, Editor-in-Chief of Yazhou Zhoukan(亞洲周刊，Asia Weekly) ,a veteran journalist who worked in Taiwan, the United States and Hong Kong for the last 40 years. He was selected by the netizens in China as one of the Top 100 Public Intellectuals in 2006 and 2008. Awarded the Distinguished Journalist in Hong Kong by the Xinyun Journalism Award in 2010 in Taiwan, he also got the SOPA ‘s Best News Commentary Award in 2011. Between 1995 and 1997, he worked as the Editor-in-Chief for the Mingpao Monthly（明報月刊) .

RUSTY TODD – HEAD OF JUDGES

Rusty Todd is visiting professor of business journalism at the University of Hong Kong Journalism & Media Studies Centre, and a professor at the University of Texas School of Journalism. He was news editor of the Asian Wall Street Journal, a Journal correspondent covering East Asian banks and markets, and development manager for Dow Jones news products in Asia-Pacific. He was founding editor of the Dow Jones Emerging Markets Report. Earlier in his career he was state editor at the Austin American-Statesman. He has a doctorate from Stanford University. He has been married 39 years and has two daughters, both born in Hong Kong.